During the first half of the 20th century it was a common practice to mold the brand name of a golf ball directly into the ball's outer surface either as raised or recessed text. If recessed, it was sometimes paint-filled to increase visibility. This type of text was small, characters typically less than 0.010″ in height, and occupied a small portion of the ball's surface in a small area on each pole. The area was typically a small rectangular patch containing the name in a single line of text, or a circular patch of ½″ diameter or less. In either case, the patch typically occupied only about 5% or less of the ball's total surface area. In reality, these were not dimples at all; they were merely a way of identifying the ball type at a time when modern printing techniques and durable inks were not available. They were too small, too fine, and too few to provide the aerodynamic function that dimples provide.